1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to electronic messaging, and more particularly, to processing of incoming electronic mail messages.
2. Description of Background
In computer communication networks, one method of communication is electronic mail (email), in which a sending user prepares and sends a message over some form of computer network to a receiving user, usually on a remote system. Most email clients, which are front-end computer programs that are used to read, write, and send email messages, also provide software to facilitate reading, saving, printing and replying to email messages. Because email messages can be sent at any time across the world as easily as across the office, to a group of people or a single recipient, without the user leaving his or her desk, email can provide considerable benefits over traditional paper based memos and postal systems. Until recently, the use of electronic mail was the single biggest generator of traffic volume on the Internet.
Currently, the industry standard specifying a syntax for email text messages that are sent between computer users is “Request for Comments 2822” (RFC 2822), published by the Internet Society in April 2001 (and available on the Internet at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt). This document is herein incorporated by reference. As outlined in Section 2 of RFC 2822, a standard email message consists of lines of ASCII test and is structured to begin with a set of message header fields (or header lines) that is followed by a message body, which contains the message author's content. Some header fields are mandatory and others are optional. The message body comprises a value string that is simply a sequence of characters that follows the header fields and is separated from the header fields by an empty line (that is, a line with nothing preceding the Carriage Return Line Feed, or CRLF)
The header fields have a fixed format that includes a keyword name immediately after newline that is followed by a colon character (“:”), a space, and a field value, which consists of a string of bytes in the field after the colon that is continued on non-null subsequent lines. The usual header fields for an email message include at least the ‘From:’ field, which provides the email address of the message's sender and optionally the name of the sender; the ‘To:’ field, which the provides the email address(es) of the message's recipient(s) and optionally the name(s) of the recipient(s); the ‘Subject:’ field, which can provide a brief summary or indicate the nature of the message's contents; and the ‘Date:’ field, which provides the local time and date when the message was written. The message body follows the headers and is separated from them by a blank line.
Email addresses occur in several originator and destination address header fields to indicate senders and recipients of messages. An address may either be an individual mailbox or, when it is desirable to treat several mailboxes as a single unit (that is, in a distribution list), a group of mailboxes. A mailbox is a conceptually entity that receives mail. Normally, a mailbox is comprised of two parts: (1) an optional display name that indicates the name of the recipient (which could be a person or a system) that could be displayed to the user of an email client application, and (2) an address specification enclosed in angle brackets (“<” and “>”). An address specification is a specific Internet identifier that contains a locally interpreted string followed by the at-sign character (“@”, ASCII value 64) followed by an Internet domain. The domain portion identifies the point to which email messages are delivered. The local-part portion is a domain dependent string. In addresses, it is simply interpreted on the particular host as a name of a particular mailbox. There is also an alternate simple form of a mailbox where the address specification appears alone, without the recipient's name or the angle brackets.
The originator address header fields of a message consist of the from field, the sender field (when applicable), and optionally the reply-to field. The originator fields indicate the mailbox(es) of the source of the message. The from field, which consists of the field name “From” and a comma-separated list of one or more mailbox specifications, specifies the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message. If the from field contains more than one mailbox specification in the mailbox-list, then the sender field must appear in the message. The sender field, which contains the field name “Sender” and a single mailbox specification, specifies the mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual transmission of the message. For example, if a secretary were to send a message for another person, the mailbox of the secretary would appear in the “Sender:” field and the mailbox of the actual author would appear in the “From:” field. The optional reply-to field may also be included, which contains the field name “Reply-To” and a comma-separated list of one or more addresses. When the “Reply-To:” field is present, it indicates the mailbox(es) to which the author of the message suggests that replies be sent. In the absence of the “Reply-To:” field, replies are typically by default sent to the mailbox(es) specified in the “From:” field unless otherwise specified by the person composing the reply.
The destination address headers fields of a message consist of three possible fields, each of the same form: the field name, which is either “To”, “Cc”, or “Bcc”, followed by a comma-separated list of one or more addresses (specified using either mailbox or group syntax). The destination fields specify the recipients of the message. Each destination field may have one or more addresses, and each of the addresses indicate the intended recipients of the message. The only difference between the three fields is how each is used. The “To:” field contains the address(es) of the primary recipient(s) of the message. The “Cc:” field (where the “Cc” means “Carbon Copy” in the sense of making a copy on a typewriter using carbon paper) contains the addresses of others who are to receive the message, though the content of the message may not be directed at them. The “Bcc:” field (where the “Bcc” means “Blind Carbon Copy”) contains addresses of recipients of the message whose addresses are not to be revealed to other recipients of the message.
When a message is a reply to another message, the mailboxes of the authors of the original message (the mailboxes in the “From:” field) or mailboxes specified in the “Reply-To:” field (if it exists) may appear in the “To:” field of the reply since these would normally be the primary recipients of the reply. If a reply is sent to a message that has multiple destination fields, it is often desirable to send a copy of the reply to all of the recipients of the message, in addition to the author. When such a reply is formed, addresses in the “To:” and “Cc:” fields of the original message will generally appear in the “Cc:” field of the reply, since these are normally secondary recipients of the reply. If a “Bcc:” field is present in the original message, addresses in that field may appear in the “Bcc:” field of the reply, but typically do not (and should not) appear in the “To:” or “Cc:” fields.
An active email user sends and receives a number of messages in any given day. Some messages that are received are junk mail that can be discarded unread, some are urgent alerts to be dealt with immediately, and other messages are pushed aside until the user has spare time available to read them. When an email user opens a received message using an email client application, most email client programs will display, in addition to the body of the message, the ‘From:’, ‘To:’, ‘Cc:’, ‘Subject:’, and ‘Date:’ header fields. A user can utilize the information provided in the displayed header fields to aid in deciding how the deal with the message. For example, a user that receives a large number messages might use the header fields displayed by his or her email client application in making a decision to closely read only the email messages where their mailbox address is listed in the ‘To:’ field based on an inference that messages where their address is instead listed in the ‘Cc:’ field are probably messages sent to that user simply to keep that user “in the loop,” and therefore not of great importance to that user.
Nevertheless, in many cases, an email message sent to multiple recipients may contain, in the body of the message, a specific question directed to a recipient user whose address is listed in the “Cc:” field. If that recipient user decides to not read the message closely because his or her address is listed in the ‘Cc:’ field, there is a risk the specific inquiry directed to that user will go unanswered. This type of risk can increase in the cases of replies to messages that have multiple recipients and/or multiple destination fields are sent to all of the recipients of the message, in addition to the original message author. As described above, when such a reply is formed, addresses in the “To:” and “Cc:” fields of the original message will generally appear in the “Cc:” field of the reply, while the addresses in the “From:” field or addresses specified in the “Reply-To:” field (if it exists) will appear in the “To:” field of the reply. Particularly in areas of ongoing threaded group email discussion with many replies to the same original message, this destination field rearrangement can render the particular destination field where a recipient user's address appears meaningless as far as making a determination as to the message's particular importance to him or her.